Christopher V. Flett

The longer you’re in business, the less surprised you are by what you see. I remember years ago putting together a business plan for a technology group I was doing a joint venture with. I spent months developing the profit model and after presenting the model to a group of the fellas, I was later left out of the deal (along with Intel I might add) and watched as the deal moved forward without me, even though I had created it.

I have said time and time again (and even wrote about it in “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business”) that it is a mistake to expect fairness in business. You can’t control how people act, but you can control who you do business with. Even being focused on working with the right people, you’ll still find yourself staring at someone who thinks they can take advantage of a situation and that you’ll roll over and take it. This my friends is a time for you to rely on your agreements. You don’t have an agreement you say? Well, what the hell were you thinking? Did you you think that everything was going to be rainbows and unicorns? Did you think that at some point, that Dr. Jekyll didn’t have a little Mr. Hyde in them? My dad had a saying:

“Business is business and friendship is bullshit. Your friends will fuck you over money if they get the chance.”

I always thought the old guy was a little too worried about getting worked over, but after my technology idea went sideways, I learned to have things in writing. If a deal is worth doing, it’s worth having in writing. But having the agreement is only the first half. The second half is enforcement. A contract is worthless if you won’t enforce it. The great thing about this is we have a legal system that will interpret the contract and determine who is in the right, and who is in the wrong. A client of mine is struggling to get paid by a client. She has an agreement and she is taking this dirt bag into small claims court to collect the money. It isn’t about the money (it rarely is). It’s about not getting rimmed by someone who thinks you are a pushover. You can be nice right until the point where they take advantage of you. And then, you let the agreement speak for itself.

Get all your business dealings in writing. Take it from a guy who is never surprised how far people will go to kite someone else, a signed contract simplifies a lot of legal issues. And if someone tries to take advantage of you, go the distance. You owe it to yourself and to your business.